USB-to-Serial ??

Oct 24, 2012 16 Replies

Further cleaning up in the office found an odd cable... USB on one end, what looks to be serial on the other??



Was there such a thing.



My cable collection was sort of hilarious, I don't know why I kept some things for so long... I must have tossed 20# of parallel port printer cables ;-) ...Jim Thompson



-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

formatting link
| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.


that's not an odd cable, theres millions of them, replacement for the serialport that is no more on most computers

-Lasse

If you take the serial connector apart, you will find a USB-Serial chip.

If you plug the USB end into a PC, it should turn into another serial port. That's /dev/ttyUSBx on Linux systesm, and COMx on Windows boxes.

These are my opinions. I hate spam.

Yes. Hang onto it. Same with old SCSI and IEEE gear. One day you may need it to connect your prehistoric test & measurement kit to a new PC.

Regards, Martin Brown

At work (manufacturing plant) it has come up a number of times. You never know when you might need it. Especially old SCSI, Ethernet, GPIB, and serial adapters. It is way easier to fix and stock parts for older systems than rebuild them.

Hah, yes I reduced that parallel printer cable collection down to two of each now ;-)

Mark DeArman

The common chip is the FT232H

/Klaus

Most of mine use the Prolific chipset (Taiwan, IIRC).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

I Just reciently had to procure a Centronics to Parallel prot cable. No one carries those anymore, except the little computer shops. Hang on to those as they are obsolete.

Cheers

How many hundred do you need?

I only needed one for a new Zebra printer/HP printserver, but the local offcemax /staples doesn't carry those anymore.

Cheers

Thanks! I'll keep it. I have ONE very-occasional-use event recorder that needs a serial port input (my infamous aircraft noise reporter that automatically sends E-mail to the blond bitch at city hall :-) ...Jim Thompson

| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I have them from 6 to 25 feet, if you ever need another. Just pay postage. I still have plenty of 9 & 25 pin serial cables.

I got tons of uncommon chips. At90usb162 (USB2Serial) talking to a PIC32 b oot loader. Atmega32u2 bootloading an Atmega169 LCD. Another At90usb162 a s debug console. Couples of At90usb162 as remote RF consoles. I have them on VCOM3, 4, 9, 10 and 11. Not a single FTDI chip.

Worse are the DB-25 to the mini-printer connector cables. If mine breaks I think I'll just skip printing from now on.

Rick

Hey, do you have a baseball team out there in the desert? The Arizona Armadillos or something?

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

The wire is pretty good quality and the cables are very handy to use in custom projects if you have corresponding connectors. John Ferrell W8CCW

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required